Viet Nam Human Rights
Which price for the environment?
12/10/15
Almost
3 years ago, on December 12, 2012, Ministry of Natural Resources and
Environment announced strategy of national environmental protection until 2020
and vision to 2030. The ministry said, it needed to 50.88 billion USD
(1,000,000 billion VND) to implement the strategy. This figure immediately
caused a stir.
A
reporter asked, "Is there need such large amounts of money to protect the
environment?". Mr. Nguyen Van Tai, Former Director of the Strategy and
Policy Institute (now the General Directorate of the Environment Department)
said, “Despite spending a lot of money in the trend of increasing pollution, if
we have not any strong measure, we will have nothing left to defend”.
In
fact, Vietnam is paying dearly for environmental pollution. Since the beginning
of the year, floods cause 2.500 billion VND for Quang Ninh province and other
damage. The prolonged drought caused 50 thousand people in Ninh Thuan fall into
starvation and dehydration. Experts pointed out that the cause of the two disasters
derived from climate change and profound reason is environmental pollution.
Statistics
from the World Bank shows that environmental pollution in Vietnam causes damage
to 5% of annual gross domestic product. In addition, Vietnam has to spend USD
780 million (nearly 16 trillion) for the treatment of diseases caused by
environmental pollution.
Environmental
pollution with the increase of anomaly natural disasters not only affects the
health of the people, causing disturbance in the society and direct damages to
the economy but also influences the macroeconomic. At the fifth conference on
National Environment, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung stressed “The
international environmental experts warned, in 10 coming years, Vietnam’s GDP
could double but without proper care, the environmental pollution will increase
3 times, maybe even 4-5 times. Each 1% of GDP, pollution damages will make 3%
loss of GDP”.
The
effects of environmental pollution are no longer distant but right in front of
us. Experts have said “we ourselves will have to pay dearly for the actions damaging
environment rather than waiting until the time of our children”.
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All comments [ 10 ]
ecosystem services is not exactly a phrase to stir the human imagination. But over the past few years, it has managed to dazzle both diehard conservationists and bottom-line business types as the best answer to global environmental decline.
Old-style protection of nature for its own sake has badly failed to stop the destruction of habitats and the dwindling of species. It has failed largely because philosophical and scientific arguments rarely trump profits and the promise of jobs.
conservationists can't usually put enough money on the table to meet commercial interests on their own terms.
Pointing out the marketplace value of ecosystem services was initially just a way to remind people what was being lost in the process — benefits like flood control, water filtration, carbon sequestration, and species habitat.
Many ecosystem services are also likely to be hard to price — for instance, the arguably beneficial effects on climate and agriculture (minus the deleterious impacts on health) when atmospheric dust from the African Sahel drifts across the Atlantic.
There are often no prices that reflect the value of eco-system goods and services accruing from the natural environment, because they are not like financial assets that are traded in markets.
although understanding the economic value of the natural environment is only one of the required elements that could help governments to make good decisions about projects and policies, environmental valuation can clarify trade-offs involved.
we need to understand fully the environmental implications of this decision (in financial terms).
By valuing the true cost of aggregate mining activities in Majuro, it was shown that the damage from unsustainable mining activities in terms of lost coastal-protection services was far higher than the cost of aggregate obtained from more sustainable offshore sites
Services which enable people to make a living such as in fisheries and forestry; those which support human life through potable water and clean air; and others which regulate other important eco systems such as sea grass beds and mangroves, which act as a nursery for juvenile fish.
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